Russian doping scandal: Blessing Okagbare to get Beijing Olympic silver

Nigeria’s athletics queen, Blessing Okagbare, is set to have her bronze medal from the long jump event of the Beijing Olympics upgraded to silver.

This comes after the previous holder Tatyana Lebedeva from Russia was stripped of her medal due to doping.

The double-medalist alongside two compatriots lost their appeals to the Court of Arbitration (CAS) for Sport on Thursday.

CAS confirmed the International Olympic Commission’s (IOC) decisions in 2016 to disqualify the pair plus compatriot Ekaterina Gnidenko.

The banned anabolic steroid turinabol was discovered in retests of all three women’s Olympic anti-doping samples.

At their appeal hearings in May in Lausanne, all three failed to prove the anti-doping test methods were not scientifically valid, CAS said in a statement.

While Lebedeva could potentially lose two silver medals, Maria Abakumova would relinquish silver in the javelin to Christina Obergfoll of Germany.

Okagbare is Women’s 100 metres Commonwealth Games world-record holder and current African record holder in the 200m.

The 29-year-old last reached the top podium, winning bronze in the 100m event at the 2016 Olympics.